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A campaigner dressed as Rupert Murdoch burns the Leveson report while another dressed as U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is tied to a chair during a protest over media concentration on Thursday in London. (Sang Tan / AP)

Lord Justice Brian Leveson poses with an executive summary of his report following an inquiry into media practices in central London November 29, 2012. (PAUL HACKETT / Reuters)

By Lesley Ciarula TaylorStaff Reporter

Thu., Nov. 29, 2012

The British media needs to be more like the Canadian media, a damning report on the inner workings of the U.K. press suggests.

Lord Justice Brian Leveson, in his final report after nine months of inquiry into the News International phone hacking scandal, said Thursday that Britain needs a “mechanism for independent self-regulation” that would allow victims of the media to fight back outside of the courts.

“Attempts to take them (the media) to task have not been successful,” Leveson’s 515-page report said.

“Even changes made following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, have hardly been enduring.”

“What he is recommending is very much what we do here,” said Don McCurdy, executive director of the Ontario Press Council.

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Newspapers “fund the operations but they don’t make the decisions. Most of our membership must be public members,” he said.

Canadian press councils “represent the public and represent the press. That’s the beauty of it. The government didn’t establish it. We aren’t government regulated.”

Leveson’s report describes at times “outrageous” behaviour by some British media competing in a “race to the bottom” that rode roughshod over “the rights and liberties of individuals.”

His commission, he said ruefully, is the seventh press inquiry in 70 years and “no one can think it makes any sense to contemplate an eighth.”

Parliament, he said, needs to pass legislation to “underpin” freedom of the press, recognize the regulatory body and validate the body’s journalism standards code.

British law has not regulated, or protected, the press in 300 years, since a 17th century backlash against government censorship laws.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, enacted in 1982, set out “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.”

The inquiry in the U.K., Leveson noted, was “sparked by public revulsion of a single act — the hacking of the mobile phone of a murdered teenager.” That clandestine theft of information from Milly Dowler’s phone ultimately led to the shutdown of the tabloid News of the World run by Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

An independent regulatory commission, with not more than one current newspaper editor on its board, should replace the voluntary membership of the failed, Press Complaints Commission, the report recommends.

As a carrot to go with his stick, Leveson said the regulators could also protect media from wealthy litigants trying to bankrupt publishers.

The U.K. board should have the power to impose fines of up to £1 million ($1.6 million) for a breach of the standards code created by the new commission, Leveson said.

However, “the board should not have the power to prevent publication of any material, by anyone, at any time.”

The only legislation required would enshrine in law the duty of the government to guarantee freedom of the press.

As a brake on reckless behaviour, Leveson suggested media “publish compliance reports” that the public could read and which would be as “transparent as possible to the sources used for stories.”

Politicians, he said, should consider publishing details of all meetings with media proprietors, newspaper editors or senior executives and a fair picture of other interaction (correspondence, phone, text and email).

“We accept the recommendation,” Prime Minister David Cameron said in the House of Commons Thursday, speaking on behalf of the government.

“A regulatory system should be put in place rapidly,” he said. To grumblings from the opposition benches, however, he rejected legislative changes as a threat to freedom of the press.

Actor Hugh Grant, who testified as a target of phone-hacking at the inquiry, said he watched Cameron’s speech with “non-celeb” victims. “Buzzword is betrayal.”

“Most Canadians would view the media in the U.K. as having a very cowboy mentality,” the Ontario Press Council’s McCurdy said. “Here it’s much more civil and respectful and small-c conservative.”

He acknowledged that Canada’s press councils have been hurt by declining membership, particularly last year’s pullout by Sun Media newspapers.

As to whether Britain can move toward an independent press council with clout, McCurdy said it depended ultimately on the public demanding change.

Leveson did couch his critique by saying, “Press freedom should not be jeopardized. The British press, all of it, serves the country well for the vast majority of the time.”

Politicians, he said, “have had or developed too close a relationship with the press in a way which has not been in the public interest.”

Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old News of the World in July 2011. His U.K. newspaper company, News International, has paid damages to dozens of hacking victims and faces lawsuits from dozens more.

The former Murdoch editors and journalists subsequently charged with phone hacking, police bribery or other wrongdoing include Cameron’s former spokesman, Andy Coulson, and ex-News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, a friend of the prime minister.

Coulson and Brooks appeared in court Thursday on charges of paying public officials for information. They were released on bail until Dec. 6.

“Everybody wants two things: firstly, a strong, independent, raucous press who can hold people in positions of power to account, and secondly to protect ordinary people — the vulnerable, the innocent — when the press overstep the mark,” Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said Thursday.

“That’s the balance that we are trying to strike and I am sure we will.”

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